Editorial: How Canada can help those fleeing Myanmar

Local Bangladeshis help Rohingya Muslim refugees to disembark from a boat on the Bangladeshi side of Naf river near the Bangladeshi town of Teknaf on September 11, 2017. The number of Rohingya who have fled violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state and entered Bangladesh since August 25 has reached 313,000, a UN spokesman said on September 11. / AFP PHOTO / MUNIR UZ ZAMANMUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP/Getty Images MUNIR UZ ZAMAN, AFP/Getty ImagesMUNIR UZ ZAMAN / AFP/Getty Images

It’s hard to square the outpouring of sympathy Canadians have shown for Syrian refugees with their seeming apathy in the case of Myanmar’s Rohingya, who have been grappling with violence for years. In recent weeks, around 300,000 of them have fled their homes in the state of Rakhine.

Yet there are similarities between both crises. Just as Syrian refugees chanced crossing the Mediterranean, Rohingya have been scrambling aboard boats to get to Bangladesh, and many, mostly women and children, have died.

There have been harrowing tales of abuse by Myanmar’s (formerly Burma’s) security forces. Villagers from Tula Toli told of babies tossed into the river to drown; a man spoke of finding his grandmother decapitated. Villages have been torched, and there are allegations that security forces have burned people alive inside their huts. Farida Deif, the Canada director of Human Rights Watch, says this has all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing: the systematic killing or removal of a certain group from a territory.

Canada could do something about the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority, just as it showed leadership with the Syrians.

We could be an international leader in offering refugee status to some of those who’ve fled their homes and want to live in peace in Canada. Even if the numbers were only symbolic – a few thousand, say – it would be a call to action. If Canada is stepping up, surely other nations can do so as well.

Human Rights Watch also wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to press Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, to allow humanitarian aid into the Rohingya area, stop the military campaign against the minority group and allow in a UN fact-finding mission. (Other critics want Canada to withdraw Suu Kyi’s honorary citizenship, which was bestowed at a time when we thought she was a global champion of human rights.)

Few refugees from Myanmar are in Canada already, given the hardship of getting here (the Immigration and Refugee Board says just four claims were initiated between January and March 2017). Because of such logistics, “I think Canada should be really studying very carefully the asylum applications that are coming from Burma and expediting them,” says Deif.

Accepting refugees isn’t a simple process. While the Rohingya in general are heavily persecuted, some are also part of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a violent insurgent group. The latest flareup of atrocities reportedly began after Rohingya militants attacked police outposts in Rakhine state, says the Council on Foreign Relations.

But retaliation for attacks is no excuse for innocents to suffer; and Aung San Suu Kyi’s refusal to condemn what’s happening further emboldens the state’s abuse.

Canada is used to dealing with the complexity of refugee situations; we’ve moved nimbly to help certain groups. Yazidi refugees, for example, were brought to Canada to escape the ravages of ISIL. And news reports suggest we’ve also been running a secret refugee operation to get persecuted LGBTQ people out of Chechnya.

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